RESMAP – REmote Sensing Monitoring of the Atlantic off Portugal

The newly-born Copernicus project, a European initiative of the most ambitious among international Earth observation programs, emphasizes the importance of ocean color remote sensing to derive high-quality product maps permitting enhancement of marine environment monitoring in coastal zones and identification of algal blooms. In line with this strategic plan, scope of this research contract is to implement state-of-the-arts bio-optical models to account for environmental specificities, as well as to execute radiative transfer simulations for evaluating uncertainty budgets affecting both space-born and in-situ data products. The study rationale is to progress the validation of map products in selected European basins by considering results obtained through the recent 4th reprocessing of MERIS data. Within Ocean Color activities of Portugal, the investigation underpin the attainment of quality targets in the SW Algarve coastal region. This project is executed in close collaboration with Sagremarisco Lda. Both CIMA and Sagremarisco research scientists are principal investigator members within the validation team of the forthcoming Sentinel-3 ocean color space mission managed by European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC).